South Ayrshire has seen a spike in Covid cases during the last 24 hours, new figures have revealed.
A total of 38 new positive tests were returned – more than the whole of the last week combined.
It is a setback in the quest to suppress the virus after weeks of steady progress made in the region.
No one cause has yet been identified behind the surge, revealed in the latest Public Health Scotland data today.
It shows that the 38 positive cases were recorded as of Tuesday, March 9.
But in the preceeding week, between Monday, March 1 and Sunday, March 7, there were just 34 positive tests registered in the region.
That has also seen South Ayrshire's seven-day infection rate per 100,000 population rise by more than 50 per cent, from 19.5 to 30.2.
However, encouragingly for the area, it still remains among the lowest-affected council regions in Scotland.
By contrast, North Ayrshire has an infection rate of 86.8 per 100,000 people and East Ayrshire's rate is 59.0.
Clackmannanshire at 166.9 has the highest seven-day average.
There have been another 20 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours across Scotland, including four people from the NHS Ayrshire & Arran health board area, which means 7,461 people have passed away since March 2020.
However, data from the National Records of Scotland (NRS) shows 9,725 deaths had been registered up to Sunday, March 7 where the disease was mentioned on the death certificate.
Across Scotland, as of 8.30am this morning, a total of 1,809,158 people had received the first dose of their Covid vaccine with 132,760 having received their second dose.
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